When the verb ser is used with a first or second person subject in the main clause, followed by a relative clause, the verb of the relative clause will be conjugated in third person, based on its agreement with the relative pronoun as subject.
uh huh. So, I have this Spanish grammar book from college. Let me tell you a little bit about me and Spanish in college.... we did not get along. I think I had a boyfriend during my grammar class which equaled not as much studying as I should have done, and there was all this grammar vocabulary that I didn't understand at all. I think in one of my education classes, I had a professor that said we learn things like that to forget them, so as far as English went.... I don't remember direct objects or relative pronouns or antecedents. Anyway, all that to say, when we moved those to learning in a different language... I really, really didn't understand and I didn't try to learn it. (Bad idea, kids, pay attention in class!- and I'm not just saying that cuz I'm a teacher now ;))
Fast-forward a couple years, and I'm now having to teach the English language and grammar to my 6th grade- which means I really have to know what I'm talking about! So, now that I actually understand some of these vocabulary terms, I actually really enjoy the grammar side of things. So, I decided to take out that Spanish book (which I brought to Honduras for fun, and didn't understand at the beginning of the year) and I understand it now! Which means my Spanish skills have improved greatly. I also am trying really hard to talk to people in Spanish and not worry if I sound dumb. I'm learning! YAY!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
windmills and wooden shoes and honduras.
k. part two of 'how books dictate my life'
This one time, (like last weekend) my roommate Rachel's parents were coming to visit. I folded all my clothes for the first time since... September probably (I'm not even joking), we organized all the food on our shelves so they looked nice, and had ourselves a through Spring cleaning. Monday night, everyone was gone and I decided I should clean the bathroom since... that's an important thing to do when you have company coming. (I learned that from my mom ;)) So, I started in and here's the thing with our bathroom- the sink is pretty terrible. It's this tiny little porcelain thing that moves everytime we touch it. Pretty iffy. Also, the plastic pipes are cracked so at the beginning of the year I had put plastic and duct tape around them to keep the water from spraying out. This works fairly well, but there's still a pretty steady drip so we keep a big bucket underneath that we empty every few days. Well. People were visiting- and not just any visitors- parents! So, we had to make it look we really know what we're doing here :) I thought it would be a good idea to readjust the plastic and fix it up a little bit. Once I took the plastic off, I decided the pipes were really gross and it'd be a good idea to clean them out. So, I took the pipes off and stuck them in a bucket of bleach water. Then I investigated. (If you've read Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, you might know where this is going. If not, keep reading because it gets better :)) I discovered that the sink was held on by a metal plate and the screws were loose and I thought, "Wow, if I can just screw this thing back in our sink will be fixed and everyone will think I'm ridiculously handy!" First problem- we don't have a screwdriver in our house. But we do have butter knives which ended up being the perfect size. Second problem: the sink is what water comes out of and there are tubes connecting the faucet to the water outside. I found this out when I thought I'd just take the sink off the wall and unscrew whatever that little white thing was attached to a tube running into the wall.... yes. I have a college degree, and yes a very powerful stream of water came shooting out at me and into our bathroom.
I solved this problem by screwing the tube back on and deciding to just hold the sink while I also screwed the plate back in. Slightly tricky angle, but do-able.... except for the fact that our house is made out of adobe, which is basically dried mud. This means that no matter how many times I screwed that stupid thing in, it was going to keep falling out because the wall is just not strong enough to hold it anymore. So I was stuck. Rachel came home (thankfully her parents decided to stay in town for the night and come see our house in the morning) to a soaking wet roommate and bathroom. We both ended up working on the sink for about 40 minutes, which included the oh-so-lovely water tube that was attached to both wall and faucet to this time come out of the faucet and spray both of us several, several times (after seeing me, Rach put on her swimsuit before helping so I would probably say she's the smarter of us two ;)). So what does this have to do with my book? I'll tell you! In Hans Brinker there is a story about a little Dutch boy who, on his way home, sees a leak in the dike and sticks his finger in it. He stays there all night because he knows if he takes his finger out, the water will make the hole bigger and bigger and pretty soon all of Holland will be flooded!
So, Rachel and I were two little Dutch girls with our thumb over a tube for a very long time (to save all of our house from being flooded!) before we decided to call a neighbor to see if there was any way to turn the water off to our house. Which, of course there was. So we set our sink on the floor and went without water until some people from school came up Wednesday and today and fixed it for us. Now we have shiny, new metal pipes; some branches that the cut to keep the sink propped; and a faucet that somehow got broken off and doesn't work. Which means.... we still can't use our sink, but that will have to be fixed another day. :) Anyway, it was a pretty fun time and quite the learning experience!
ps. It's taken me this long to find out that I can put pictures throughout my blog instead of all in a big clump in a separate blog , so maybe I can start being a little more high tech and add pics :)
This one time, (like last weekend) my roommate Rachel's parents were coming to visit. I folded all my clothes for the first time since... September probably (I'm not even joking), we organized all the food on our shelves so they looked nice, and had ourselves a through Spring cleaning. Monday night, everyone was gone and I decided I should clean the bathroom since... that's an important thing to do when you have company coming. (I learned that from my mom ;)) So, I started in and here's the thing with our bathroom- the sink is pretty terrible. It's this tiny little porcelain thing that moves everytime we touch it. Pretty iffy. Also, the plastic pipes are cracked so at the beginning of the year I had put plastic and duct tape around them to keep the water from spraying out. This works fairly well, but there's still a pretty steady drip so we keep a big bucket underneath that we empty every few days. Well. People were visiting- and not just any visitors- parents! So, we had to make it look we really know what we're doing here :) I thought it would be a good idea to readjust the plastic and fix it up a little bit. Once I took the plastic off, I decided the pipes were really gross and it'd be a good idea to clean them out. So, I took the pipes off and stuck them in a bucket of bleach water. Then I investigated. (If you've read Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, you might know where this is going. If not, keep reading because it gets better :)) I discovered that the sink was held on by a metal plate and the screws were loose and I thought, "Wow, if I can just screw this thing back in our sink will be fixed and everyone will think I'm ridiculously handy!" First problem- we don't have a screwdriver in our house. But we do have butter knives which ended up being the perfect size. Second problem: the sink is what water comes out of and there are tubes connecting the faucet to the water outside. I found this out when I thought I'd just take the sink off the wall and unscrew whatever that little white thing was attached to a tube running into the wall.... yes. I have a college degree, and yes a very powerful stream of water came shooting out at me and into our bathroom.
I solved this problem by screwing the tube back on and deciding to just hold the sink while I also screwed the plate back in. Slightly tricky angle, but do-able.... except for the fact that our house is made out of adobe, which is basically dried mud. This means that no matter how many times I screwed that stupid thing in, it was going to keep falling out because the wall is just not strong enough to hold it anymore. So I was stuck. Rachel came home (thankfully her parents decided to stay in town for the night and come see our house in the morning) to a soaking wet roommate and bathroom. We both ended up working on the sink for about 40 minutes, which included the oh-so-lovely water tube that was attached to both wall and faucet to this time come out of the faucet and spray both of us several, several times (after seeing me, Rach put on her swimsuit before helping so I would probably say she's the smarter of us two ;)). So what does this have to do with my book? I'll tell you! In Hans Brinker there is a story about a little Dutch boy who, on his way home, sees a leak in the dike and sticks his finger in it. He stays there all night because he knows if he takes his finger out, the water will make the hole bigger and bigger and pretty soon all of Holland will be flooded!
So, Rachel and I were two little Dutch girls with our thumb over a tube for a very long time (to save all of our house from being flooded!) before we decided to call a neighbor to see if there was any way to turn the water off to our house. Which, of course there was. So we set our sink on the floor and went without water until some people from school came up Wednesday and today and fixed it for us. Now we have shiny, new metal pipes; some branches that the cut to keep the sink propped; and a faucet that somehow got broken off and doesn't work. Which means.... we still can't use our sink, but that will have to be fixed another day. :) Anyway, it was a pretty fun time and quite the learning experience!
ps. It's taken me this long to find out that I can put pictures throughout my blog instead of all in a big clump in a separate blog , so maybe I can start being a little more high tech and add pics :)
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
how books have completely dictated my life :)
I've decided to stay a second year.... I told my principal on Monday and he was pretty excited. I also said something about it to my kids and they were even excited, and a little disappointed I'm going to stay teaching 6th grade and not moving on to 7th. :) So that's a good thing right? I've been thinking about living here a lot lately- obviously- because I was trying to decide if I should stay for sure.... and let me give you a list of books that helped me make my decision:
Swiss Family Robinson
Little House books
all the American Girl books
(ok movie but still...) Peter Pan
anything about Native Americans
anything about WWII- esp Anne Frank and The Hiding Place where people stay hidden in walls :)
Chronicles of Narnia
Boxcar Children
see any theme in these books? ok maybe you don't because maybe you haven't read them so I'll just tell you. They're all these stories about kids/people having to live out in the wilderness or by themselves or foraging around for food and shelter and water.... my siblings and I would seriously play these kind of games all the time. We'd run around outside all day and pretend we were on a boat looking for an island, or be sitting in our teepees cooking 'food'.... one time, my dad got mad because we'd pulled up a bunch of plants for our 'supper' and it was his rhubarb haha :)
Anyway, what does this do with now? I love my life. I feel like I'm really Laura Ingalls Wilder or Roberta from Swiss Family Robinson or Peter Pan! (cuz most of the time, he really is being played by a girl so, I can say that :) I've found that I love love love having to wash all my dishes outside and look at the mountain while doing it; that I wash all my clothes by hand; that I burn trash... it seems so romantic and simple and lovely. you should all come try it :)
So. that's what's going on. I have a second edition of 'how books have completely dicated my life' that is related to the book Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates (a Dutch favorite ;)) but I'm going to have to wait to share about it because it is WAAAY past my bedtime. I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've blogged, I'll try to get better at the updates!
Swiss Family Robinson
Little House books
all the American Girl books
(ok movie but still...) Peter Pan
anything about Native Americans
anything about WWII- esp Anne Frank and The Hiding Place where people stay hidden in walls :)
Chronicles of Narnia
Boxcar Children
see any theme in these books? ok maybe you don't because maybe you haven't read them so I'll just tell you. They're all these stories about kids/people having to live out in the wilderness or by themselves or foraging around for food and shelter and water.... my siblings and I would seriously play these kind of games all the time. We'd run around outside all day and pretend we were on a boat looking for an island, or be sitting in our teepees cooking 'food'.... one time, my dad got mad because we'd pulled up a bunch of plants for our 'supper' and it was his rhubarb haha :)
Anyway, what does this do with now? I love my life. I feel like I'm really Laura Ingalls Wilder or Roberta from Swiss Family Robinson or Peter Pan! (cuz most of the time, he really is being played by a girl so, I can say that :) I've found that I love love love having to wash all my dishes outside and look at the mountain while doing it; that I wash all my clothes by hand; that I burn trash... it seems so romantic and simple and lovely. you should all come try it :)
So. that's what's going on. I have a second edition of 'how books have completely dicated my life' that is related to the book Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates (a Dutch favorite ;)) but I'm going to have to wait to share about it because it is WAAAY past my bedtime. I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've blogged, I'll try to get better at the updates!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
It's the weekend! It's February!
On Friday, I had a minor meltdown because I couldn't find ANYTHING to wear. I brought 3 pairs of navy pants and 2 navy skirts to use for my uniform... most of them were slightly bigger than I would normally wear clothes, but they were super cheap and I figured I'd wear a belt. Well, I walk up and down a mountain every day and have started running after school with some of the other teachers which has resulted in losing a little weight-- which I know is a good thing, but not when your clothes don't fit and there's no place to buy them in Gracias! Friday, my only option was the pants I'd been wearing all week and they were covered in dust and dirt so I was very frustrated. Luckily, Sarah lent me some of her pants, but parent teacher conferences are this coming weekend so I knew I'd need to figure something out so I didn't look like some unprofessional, young girl who didn't care how she looked! I talked to one of the teachers, Ana, and she said we could just go to Santa Rosa this weekend and she could help me find something. So, that's what we did! Ramon, Ana and I travelled about an hour to Santa Rosa on Saturday morning and spent the day shopping. We went into several stores and the market and eventually I was able to find a pair of pants and a skirt I liked. It was an interesting experience. Women's dress clothes here are made of really thin, really clingy material. So that was the first problem. Second problem is that Honduran women are TINY. We went to the market and tons of stands were selling navy dress pants but hardly anyone had bigger than a size M and no one had over a size L. Apparently in Honduran pant size, I'm an XL so that was discouraging, especially because the reason I was shopping was because I've lost weight!! :) There were a couple funny moments though. At the market (which is just rows and rows and turns of stands inside a big building), they let you try pants on behind their stands and someone would pin up a towel in the back corner. One place, they had no back area and no way to pin anything up, but they did have a big baby bassinet that could block one side of me and a lady that could hold up a blanket on the other side of me. So, I tried on pants with a baby looking up at me the whole time from one side, and a lady looking at me from the other. :) The pants were buttonable but certainly not wearable- you know what I mean, when your stomach just pushes itself out all over the sides of your pants? yeah... not something I'm going to be wearing to school. I showed Ana and said they were too small, and then the lady selling me the pants lifted her shirt up and showed me that's how she wears her pants! :) It's actually how most women wear clothes, which I find so odd. The tighter you can wear something, the better, even if it means you have shirt buttons popping and pant tops folding over. Very attractive, but not the look I'm going for :) Eventually I found what I needed - I got both the skirt and pants for about $22, or 450 Lempiras, which I thought was really expensive but... necessary purchases! Ana was so helpful and brought us to a sweet little coffee shop where I had some delicious chocolate cake! I ended up spending the evening with Ana and my neighbor Mrs. Laureles- we made some Valentine's for our kids, gave ourselves pedicures and watched a movie!
Today, I had an extremely productive day. The girls all went to town but I just couldn't get myself out of bed, so I stayed there until 10:30 (!!!!). Then, since there was no one around, I got bored and started to clean. I cleaned our kitchen, swept and mopped the floors and did all my laundry (including my bedsheets!) all by myself! Then, I burned some trash and by that time Jacki and Sarah were back. They bought some flowers in town, so we planted those in front of our house- it's so pretty! So, now I'm covered in sweat, ash and dirt and our water is off :) Hopefully I get clean before our Super Bowl party tonight! I think we are having PIZZA, and Kirsty and Rachel are making puppy chow right now! I don't think I care who wins, but last year John Elway was on one of the commercials so.... cross your fingers!!!
On Friday, I had a minor meltdown because I couldn't find ANYTHING to wear. I brought 3 pairs of navy pants and 2 navy skirts to use for my uniform... most of them were slightly bigger than I would normally wear clothes, but they were super cheap and I figured I'd wear a belt. Well, I walk up and down a mountain every day and have started running after school with some of the other teachers which has resulted in losing a little weight-- which I know is a good thing, but not when your clothes don't fit and there's no place to buy them in Gracias! Friday, my only option was the pants I'd been wearing all week and they were covered in dust and dirt so I was very frustrated. Luckily, Sarah lent me some of her pants, but parent teacher conferences are this coming weekend so I knew I'd need to figure something out so I didn't look like some unprofessional, young girl who didn't care how she looked! I talked to one of the teachers, Ana, and she said we could just go to Santa Rosa this weekend and she could help me find something. So, that's what we did! Ramon, Ana and I travelled about an hour to Santa Rosa on Saturday morning and spent the day shopping. We went into several stores and the market and eventually I was able to find a pair of pants and a skirt I liked. It was an interesting experience. Women's dress clothes here are made of really thin, really clingy material. So that was the first problem. Second problem is that Honduran women are TINY. We went to the market and tons of stands were selling navy dress pants but hardly anyone had bigger than a size M and no one had over a size L. Apparently in Honduran pant size, I'm an XL so that was discouraging, especially because the reason I was shopping was because I've lost weight!! :) There were a couple funny moments though. At the market (which is just rows and rows and turns of stands inside a big building), they let you try pants on behind their stands and someone would pin up a towel in the back corner. One place, they had no back area and no way to pin anything up, but they did have a big baby bassinet that could block one side of me and a lady that could hold up a blanket on the other side of me. So, I tried on pants with a baby looking up at me the whole time from one side, and a lady looking at me from the other. :) The pants were buttonable but certainly not wearable- you know what I mean, when your stomach just pushes itself out all over the sides of your pants? yeah... not something I'm going to be wearing to school. I showed Ana and said they were too small, and then the lady selling me the pants lifted her shirt up and showed me that's how she wears her pants! :) It's actually how most women wear clothes, which I find so odd. The tighter you can wear something, the better, even if it means you have shirt buttons popping and pant tops folding over. Very attractive, but not the look I'm going for :) Eventually I found what I needed - I got both the skirt and pants for about $22, or 450 Lempiras, which I thought was really expensive but... necessary purchases! Ana was so helpful and brought us to a sweet little coffee shop where I had some delicious chocolate cake! I ended up spending the evening with Ana and my neighbor Mrs. Laureles- we made some Valentine's for our kids, gave ourselves pedicures and watched a movie!
Today, I had an extremely productive day. The girls all went to town but I just couldn't get myself out of bed, so I stayed there until 10:30 (!!!!). Then, since there was no one around, I got bored and started to clean. I cleaned our kitchen, swept and mopped the floors and did all my laundry (including my bedsheets!) all by myself! Then, I burned some trash and by that time Jacki and Sarah were back. They bought some flowers in town, so we planted those in front of our house- it's so pretty! So, now I'm covered in sweat, ash and dirt and our water is off :) Hopefully I get clean before our Super Bowl party tonight! I think we are having PIZZA, and Kirsty and Rachel are making puppy chow right now! I don't think I care who wins, but last year John Elway was on one of the commercials so.... cross your fingers!!!
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